Gray feathers rustle on the breast of the world

The world is gently held, today. Close-packed clouds hang low overhead, and a mist rises from every low area. It just reaches the level of my eyes. The light is gray and soft, like doves.

In the cemetery, the obelisks thrust up like masts from the fog, and every ice-bottomed standing pool is a mirror. I stepped over a blue paper carnation and the perfect, tiny handprints of squirrels.

Someone might tell me there is strife in the world today, but I'm not sure I would believe them.

Shake my head, this falls out

• North Dakota is considering using balloons instead of towers for cell phone service:
  

  "I know it sounds crazy," said Schafer, who now heads Extend America Inc., a wireless telecommunications company. "But it works in the lab."
  
  A trial balloon will be launched in the next few weeks to test the idea, said Schafer.
  

• Cat poop may be responsible for schizophrenia. Toxoplasma gondii is a critter that gets passed from cats to humans via cat feces, after which it encysts in the brain, causing toxoplasmosis. It's mostly harmless—1/3 of all humans are probably infected—but if it gets to a developing fetus it can cause various problems, including schizophrenia. This is well-known, and if you're pregnant you get a free "Get Out Of Cleaning The Cat Box" card. But now a recent paper in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine suggests that T. gondii secretes a hallucinogen that may produce the symptoms of schizophrenia. Why? Because mice get into cat poop, and mice that are hallucinating are easier for cats to catch, and so T. gondii confers an evolutionary advantage on cats. In other words, schizophrenics may just be victims of a better mousetrap.


• Some of the squirrel footprints I referred to in my last entry were preserved in little pancakes of icy snow, like individual plaster castings, or stepping stones. I'm not sure why, but I theorize that the pressure of animal feet compressed the snow just enough, forcing the melted water out and packing the ice crystals together, to make it remain when the snow around it melted—the same way stepping on wet sand at the beach compresses the sand and forces the water out, making a nonreflective circle at the waterline.


• For the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, they're building a really nifty building called the Water Cube to house the swimming pools. The design is based on packed soap bubbles; the entire building is translucent blue, and will function as a natural greenhouse. Do enlarge the pictures in this article; it's a sight.


• Those who enjoyed the logical drawing game Picross might be pleased to know that there are many more puzzles of that type online. See the Paint By Numbers Home Page for an active community.